Sri Lanka arrests top judge over sex assault

Jul 07, 2015 19:23 PM GMT+0530 | 5 Comment(s)

ECONOMYNEXT - Sri Lanka's police Tuesday made their first ever arrest of a Supreme Court judge who was accused of sexually assaulting a 30-year-old woman, officials said.

Sarath de Abrew was arrested following investigations into a complaint that he tried to force a 39-year-old woman to have sex with him in Mount Lavinia and beat her up when she refused, a police official said.

The judge, who is in his 60s, was taken before a magistrate who ordered his release on personal bail of half a million rupees, police said.

The case came to light when the victim went to the Kalubovila hospital for treatment. She had also been assaulted with a pistol.

"The woman had been stripped by the suspect. He had the intent to rape her, but his body let him down and that saved the woman," a police source said.

Abrew was made a supreme court judge by former president Mahinda Rajapakse in May 2014 a year after he was accused of abusing other colleagues at the Bangalore airport while returning home from a judges' conference.

In 2011, he was also suspended from the bench of the court of appeal following a similar allegation of sexual assault.

Legal sources say it was the first time in Sri Lanka's legal history that a Supreme Court was arrested and was being prosecuted as a sex offender.

Supreme court judges can only be removed through a complicated impeachment process in parliament. Sri Lanka's parliament was dissolved last month ahead of elections in August.

What more could go wrong for Sri Lanka.This is another Mahinda Rajapakse moment of shamelessness.Clear evidence that the country was well on its'way to the gutters as a place where law and order had descended to the standards of a cheap and illegal brothel.Starting with the Ex President,The now infamous CJ and now this shameless man.They were all very fit and proper persons to hold office in Rajapakses brothel government which is no more.Let us all hope and pray he will get his proper residence in Welikada for 20 years.Should a Judge of the SC ever put himself in a position like this.This is the outcome of ill bred scum being elevated to high office.As the Sinhala saying goes No matter how decently you bring up an URULAWASkunkit will never shed its stench

Some people think that they can do whatever they want using their power and money. But some day the nature will punish them. A very famous lawyer has secret life even though he is a married man and he supplies this prostitute woman to his friends and he messes up those friends family lives too. I wish some day that person will be punished by nature like what has happened to this judge